WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.840 You wouldn't be able to connect high speed components like graphics cards and NVMe drives to your computer 00:00:05.840 --> 00:00:09.560 without the PCI Express bus that's been a fixed on our motherboards 00:00:09.560 --> 00:00:14.720 for over a decade now. If you're not familiar, you can connect your devices via PCI Express 00:00:14.720 --> 00:00:18.240 in a few ways. Most commonly, you insert an adapter card 00:00:18.240 --> 00:00:24.720 into one of these slots right here or an M.2 SSD right over here. 00:00:24.720 --> 00:00:29.040 But did you know that not all PCI Express connections 00:00:29.120 --> 00:00:33.160 are the same? You see PCI Express can connect your devices 00:00:33.160 --> 00:00:40.480 either directly to your CPU or to the chip set which sits between your CPU 00:00:40.480 --> 00:00:46.280 and some of your other components like your Ethernet jack or some USB ports. 00:00:46.280 --> 00:00:50.560 This might be a point of confusion if you've seen a motherboard that supports say 00:00:50.560 --> 00:00:55.800 40 PCI Express lanes, but the CPU can only run one graphics card 00:00:55.800 --> 00:00:59.720 at 16X speed or two cards at 8X speed each. 00:00:59.720 --> 00:01:05.840 I mean, shouldn't all of those PCI Express lanes let you plug in more than just one or two adapter cards? 00:01:05.840 --> 00:01:11.760 This is where the difference between chip set versus CPU PCI Express lanes comes into play. 00:01:11.760 --> 00:01:15.880 Most consumer CPUs will have 16 or 20 lanes 00:01:15.880 --> 00:01:19.480 running directly off of them, which you should be using for your graphics card 00:01:19.480 --> 00:01:23.760 for the best performance. But then why is that better than using the lanes 00:01:23.760 --> 00:01:27.920 that come off the chip set? Well, one reason is that having the extra step 00:01:27.920 --> 00:01:31.320 of routing data through that chip set introduces latency 00:01:31.320 --> 00:01:35.880 which can slow down your performance. Perhaps a bigger reason though 00:01:35.880 --> 00:01:39.600 is the link that connects the chip set back to the CPU. 00:01:39.600 --> 00:01:45.320 You see, although you'll often see diagrams showing that 16 or 20 or even more PCI Express lanes 00:01:45.320 --> 00:01:49.520 come off of the chip set, the connection that it has to the CPU 00:01:49.520 --> 00:01:53.840 is actually quite narrow. It might be only four lanes wide. 00:01:53.840 --> 00:01:57.440 Now chip sets provide lots of lanes to other components and peripherals 00:01:57.440 --> 00:02:03.760 because of how many things connect to it. Firmware, SATA, audio, Ethernet, USB devices, 00:02:03.760 --> 00:02:07.480 but these are all either relatively low bandwidth 00:02:07.480 --> 00:02:10.760 applications or they're very unlikely 00:02:10.760 --> 00:02:17.760 to all be fully utilized at the same time. So having them bottlenecked as they send data to the CPU 00:02:17.760 --> 00:02:22.440 isn't all that big of a deal. That limited bandwidth can hurt you though 00:02:22.440 --> 00:02:27.880 if you try to connect something that moves considerably more data such as a graphics card 00:02:27.880 --> 00:02:31.320 while you're also trying to use all that other stuff. 00:02:31.320 --> 00:02:35.600 Now the long 16X PCI Express slots on your motherboard, 00:02:35.600 --> 00:02:39.240 those are typically connected directly to the CPU. 00:02:39.240 --> 00:02:43.280 So you don't have to worry too much about accidentally connecting a graphics card 00:02:43.280 --> 00:02:49.600 to your chip set. But because those usually too share the same 16 lanes, 00:02:49.720 --> 00:02:56.400 you can't run two cards in them at full speed unless you have a higher end CPU that supports more lanes. 00:02:56.400 --> 00:03:00.360 Additionally, if you have a standard 16 lane Intel CPU, 00:03:00.360 --> 00:03:04.720 this means that an NVMe drive installed in an M.2 slot on your board 00:03:04.720 --> 00:03:10.120 is going to be routed through the chip set. Now you shouldn't see a ton of performance loss, 00:03:10.120 --> 00:03:14.440 but the aforementioned latency plus any heavy network SATA 00:03:14.440 --> 00:03:20.240 or USB traffic being routed through those four lanes back to the CPU could result in some slowdowns 00:03:20.240 --> 00:03:25.320 depending on your workload. On a related note, this is actually why some SATA ports 00:03:25.320 --> 00:03:30.680 get disabled when you plug in an M.2 drive since those ports are also connected to the chip set 00:03:30.680 --> 00:03:34.160 and they share bandwidth. The good news though is that if you're trying to squeeze 00:03:34.160 --> 00:03:39.000 every ounce of performance out of a drive, Intel's upcoming 11th gen desktop CPUs 00:03:39.000 --> 00:03:42.640 are supposed to have 20 lanes coming directly off the CPU, 00:03:42.640 --> 00:03:46.080 four of which are meant to support an M.2 drive. 00:03:46.080 --> 00:03:53.160 And if you're on a Ryzen platform, you're in luck because you already have 20 or more lanes coming off the CPU. 00:03:53.160 --> 00:03:57.240 It's kind of like chip manufacturers widening the highway for us, 00:03:57.240 --> 00:04:01.880 but without the punitive speed limits. Thanks for watching guys, like, dislike, 00:04:01.880 --> 00:04:06.240 check out our other videos, leave a comment if you have a suggestion for a future video 00:04:06.240 --> 00:04:10.000 and don't forget to subscribe. Or you might miss the opportunity 00:04:10.000 --> 00:04:15.480 to buy this amazing guy's pad at DeltaT Store.com. Wow, you can tell it's winter, hey, the air's so dry. 00:04:16.080 --> 00:04:17.480 You hear the static?